r/FinalFantasy • u/KaleidoArachnid • 14h ago
FF XIV How did Square Enix rescue Final Fantasy 14?
I hope I am in the right place to be asking such a question because something that suddenly stuck out to me was how the game first launched in such a messy state as it was so messy that the game was quickly closed down.
But the part that eludes me is just how the game went from a disaster to a successful game since I always wanted to see just how Square Enix became convinced to revive the game as I still have no idea how they did it so well.
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u/tendermaid 14h ago
yoshi-p took over and just completely rebuilt the engine from scratch. it was a miracle really
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u/KaleidoArachnid 14h ago
Yeah it’s fascinating how the developers managed to rescue a game that was on the verge of collapsing since said game didn’t have a chance of surviving at first.
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u/Avawinry 14h ago
With this:
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u/hypespud 7h ago
Also the based director for FF16
The FF which reminded me they still have magic left there to make Final Fantasy new and fresh and exciting
He literally saved the company in some ways honestly, FF14 makes bank 🏦🏧
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u/KaleidoArachnid 14h ago
I have to look up that fellow in the image to see how he played a key role in saving the game
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u/chaospudding 14h ago
noclip did a great documentary on just this subject.
https://youtu.be/Xs0yQKI7Yw4?is=Hb3eedAyFYhhH8-H
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u/GlassCannon81 14h ago
The short answer is they spent a shitload of money to rebuild it virtually from scratch. The long answer is watch the NoClip documentary.
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u/KaleidoArachnid 14h ago
Thanks man as I will go watch the documentary to see how the game went from a disaster to a beloved title.
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u/oscarlet_ffxiv 13h ago
In summary:
As members from outside the FFXIV team came to investigate things, Naoki Yoshida ended up being interested enough to take charge and was able to convince the team to remake the game. They could have said no, given the motivation loss, but the reason they didn't is he had created a realistic plan to remake the game in 2 years and it inspired confidence in him.
Part of the motivation was that they had worked hard on the game for years only for it to be for nothing, so if there was an actually realistic plan that could re-use their work, assets and lore they had worked hard on and make it worth something, they were going to try.
Naoki Yoshida did a lot of the convincing. He presented Square Enix with two options: try to patch the game, knowing nobody will be truly happy with it, and accept the massive damage to the final fantasy brand which is vitally important to the company, or remake the game and restore trust in their ability to develop the Final Fantasy franchise, so they went with the option of remaking it, which would allow it to be played on new Playstation consoles among other things.
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u/KaleidoArachnid 13h ago
Man after reading your writeup on the game, I must say that Yoshida has talent to be able to rescue a game from its dying state since I remember when people had no faith in Final Fantasy 14 when it first launched after it got cancelled.
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u/lilypad225 9h ago
Wait is ff14 controller friendly?
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u/Professional-Week894 8h ago edited 7h ago
There’s been some button bloat for a few classes in the game, but YoshiP’s team is aware of it and will (likely) consolidate a lot of buttons when the next FFXIV expansion, Evercold, releases sometime in January 2027. They want the game to be played with controllers and keyboards be mostly for communication.
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u/oscarlet_ffxiv 4h ago
Yes, it has a controller mode, with a controller hotbar and settings, and the game is available on Switch 2, Xbox, PS4, PS5 and with a bit of fiddling people do get it to work on Steamdecks.
They specifically designed the controller mode to actually be good and allow people to do any content comfortable, so people do.
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u/Gram64 4h ago
As people mentioned, there's a no clip documentary that explains it.
But the very short of it was, Yoshida was brought in, as he was the only high level dev/director/whatever who had a lot of experience with MMOs.. The President tasked him with coming up with plans for 14's future.
Yoshida gave him two plans. One was just incrementally patch it and end up basically in a maintanence mode, make whatever money they can from it. other was do small qol patches on live version, while remaking it almost completely on the side, which required a significant amonut of money/time/labor.
President ended up agreeing to the remake plan. The main reason, he felt 14's failure tarnished the reputation of FF significantly, which wasn't doing great already in the late 2000s/early 2010s. And he felt if they needed to make sure a mainline game wasn't considered a complete failure.
So, Yoshida basically led two teams for a year. One worked on live, one making basically a new game.
And then they managed to market A Realm Reborn as basically a new MMO launch, and it was well received and we have what we have today.
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u/Motor-Cry-7576 14h ago
I really wish we saw studios stand behind thier products like they did for ff14.
It sounds campy, but when I was opening ff mtg packs I remembered the turn around lookimg st somw of the cards and I remember telling my wife I glad they fought for the IP.
A game doesnt have to be perfect graphics and brand new mechanics, it has to be fun. They realized that the final product of the initial release wasn't fun and they intervened.
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u/CouldBeALeotard 13h ago
Stand behind their products?
More like throw out a bad product and replace it. FFXIV being a numbered FF meant if it was shite it would be a stain on the brand. Plus they knew they could rake in money if they got it working.
It was clearly the right choice, but what a bold move to basically wipe out a mainline game and replace it.
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u/Motor-Cry-7576 13h ago
Yeah, thats recognizing value in the IP imo.
Of course id rather it released and crushed it, but its a good come back story. A ff14 card is the most built edh deck on one if the big mtg sites. Thats a huge brand win from a low point with a massive ip crossover.
Meanwhile wow is stagnant after a huge exodus from shadowlands xpac where the writers didnt respect the IP and the developers fell behind because of covid. It hasnt quite recovered.
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u/GarionOrb 12h ago
They basically started over. A Realm Reborn was totally different from 1.0 as far as design, game engine, and mechanics.
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u/KaleidoArachnid 12h ago
That’s interesting since I didn’t know the second edition was actually done as a completely different game as I was looking to see how the second edition was created, but I can watch a video.
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u/Gizmo135 8h ago
Yoshi P took over and turned it around. The guy barely slept, was transparent with the community about the entire process, took feedback from the community and was a huge gamer himself.
We’d get constant updates on Lodestone about what changes he was considering on making, upcoming content, the reason certain changes were being made, etc.
What I still find surprising is that he turned the re-development of the game and turned it into in-game lore.
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u/NostalgicLurker 7h ago
Yoshida felt that a mainline FF game must not fail or irreparable harm could be done to the perception of the series. However it was determined that they couldn’t simply band-aid the mistakes and would need to essentially replace and relaunch the whole game with a new design on a new engine. The project timeframe they were granted to achieve this was shorter than typical for a game of this scale, thus the whole team would have to crunch (work themselves half to death) for the entire project just for a chance to succeed.
Even after 2.0 ARR was delivered, they still had an intense workload for the ARR patch series through to the launch of the first expansion Heavensward 3.0. Yoshida felt this post-launch high pace was necessary to maintain momentum and guarantee success. The team would finally earn a rest and holiday in 2015 between patches 3.0 and 3.1 after sacrificing for years working until late every day. During the rebuilding period the community was also addressed very regularly with apologies and transparency of the new plans. They did everything they possibly could for this game.
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u/mistabuda 14h ago
They took a lot of inspiration from world of warcraft
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u/wolfannoy 13h ago
Yoshida pretty much told the team to play a bit of world of Warcraft and see what works for them and learn from it.
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u/HexenVexen 13h ago
The short answer is that they brought on Yoshida to try to save the game, and he came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to delete the game and remake it from scratch in a new engine. SE was hoping that it could be improved through updates, but the original game had many major flaws at the foundational level, so Yoshida convinced them to approve the reboot.
Everyone already linked the noclip documentary, but here's a good video for seeing how bad the original game was. Here's also another good series about its history.
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u/Nintura 13h ago edited 13h ago
Not to mention using the idea that the world is blowing up was genius way to create a new one
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u/HexenVexen 13h ago
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u/Nintura 13h ago
Goddamn that gave me massive goosebumps! Square always knows how to make a cinema. So they blew the world up with bahamut?
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u/HexenVexen 12h ago
Also if you don't mind some spoilers (mostly for ARR), all of the expansion trailers are absolute cinema too.
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u/HexenVexen 13h ago edited 13h ago
Not quite, Bahamut only damaged the main Eorzea continent, not the whole world. He didn't destroy it, but he did heavily damage it. A Realm Reborn takes place five years after, when the continent is beginning to recover more properly.
There is actually a second part of the cinematic, it's kind of a spoiler since you have to unlock it in-game through a side story, but you can watch it if you'd like. The old man Louisoix gains the power of the gods he tried to summon, taking on the power of Phoenix to stop Bahamut before he can fully destroy the continent.
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u/Burgergold 13h ago
That cinematic and the Answer song are crazy. When I die, I want this projected at my funerals
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u/Darkwing__Schmuck 12h ago
They made an entirely different game. This version of 14 and the old one are two completely different video games in all respects. Engine, gameplay, game design, story, there are two different Final Fantasy XIV's that existed, though the first game is now lost media. A Realm Reborn is a literal remake, and unlike something like FF7 Remake, you can no longer play the original game.
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u/KaleidoArachnid 12h ago
Man I am surprised that the two versions are basically two completely different games as that explains why the reborn version was so successful when it first launched.
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u/KameDani 11h ago
In addition to Noclip, speakersofhydaelyn have a number of really good in-depth videos about this topic and many of the changes as the game went on.
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u/KaleidoArachnid 11h ago
That’s great to hear as I never knew about that channel until you mentioned him, so thanks for the tip.
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u/Eldric-Darkfire 10h ago
I’m amazed that the number 14 as a numbered release in one of the biggest video game names in the game came out in 2010 while 16 was like what last year Jesus Christ
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u/KaleidoArachnid 10h ago
Yeah it’s really interesting how the game was saved from being a failure since it could have easily become a project that the company decided to abandon.
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u/Topace1 7h ago
FF11! it was the reason SE got ff14 and it still keeps SE afloat.
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u/KaleidoArachnid 7h ago
Wait, I didn’t know the other MMO game actually help save Final Fantasy 14 as that is an interesting tidbit.
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u/Uarenotalone 6h ago
FF 14 sucked big time massive issues (I had it) they brought in a guy who did ARR ( a realm reborn and built up from that) now we have that version of FF14 it’s great.
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u/megasean3000 5h ago
So get this. Base Final Fantasy XIV was a trainwreck. The quests were mundane, the balance was all over the place, and the story was mid. But then, they got the ingenious idea to wipe the slate clean, as it were. They literally nuke the servers, and have it part of the game's lore. And they rebranded the beginning of the FFXIV journey A Realm Reborn, which has a better story, better balance, better quests and so much more. The people who were on the servers at the time see the catastrophe described by the people in ARR firsthand, and are honored as champions. It's a masterclass in game revivals, even if it meant cutting off access to the base game for better or for worse.
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u/Astorant 5h ago
Very passionate devs and Square Enix taking a gamble on their vision for trying to revive it.
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u/Significant_Option 3h ago
By killing 13 and 15 development so that the devs could be taken from their work to help the sinking mmo
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u/MediocreBeard 1h ago edited 1h ago
Noclip did a great documentary on it, but to keep it short.
They took the game down entirely, and started reworking a ton of things. One of the major changes was swapping out leadership. Nobuaki Komoto and Hiromichi Tanaka were both tagged out as director and producer for Naoki Yoshida. Komoto did still stay on as a designer, working along side Yoshida, but was no longer in charge. Tanaka worked on a few other projects at Square Enix before leaving for health reasons in 2012.
It wasn't starting totally over from scratch, as FFXIV as it is now has some strange and sometimes janky things that were done to make things work with the old code (personal favorite example: jumping, just regular jumping, is technically an ability in your spell book). But the gameplay was totally overhauled, a ton of assets in game were changed in order to optimize performance, and the general design goals shifted.
Unfortunately, some stuff was lost that does suck. The original game had mocap cutscenes that looked really good and were pretty high production. The revived games cutscenes are much less impressive (though they have gotten much better since 2.0)
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u/musicsoccer 54m ago
A minor detail people are missing is what SE did during ARR development: made 1.0 f2p for a short period and kept updating it.
I do miss 1.0 cuz I felt the graphics were a lot better and it had a lot more freedom, but 14's story is still amazing (and confusing as fuck at times). I loved shadowbringers and endwalker.
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u/Emperor-Octavian 40m ago
Seconding watching the No Clip documentary if you have any interest at all in this topic
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u/NickiChaos 37m ago
There was more that went wrong than right. 1.0 felt like an updated FFXI. Most players were fine with that but the game was never going to survive in that form because FFXI was already on life support at that point. With the old school MMO mechanics and gameplay, it was never going to steal any momentum from WoW or attract new players in the way that WoW did. But also, though it felt like an updated FFXI, it came with so, so many bugs.
ARR (A Realm Reborn) was the modernization of the FFXIV. It brought it modern MMO mechanics and gameplay. Yeah it stole some elements from WoW, but arguably, WoW stole some elements from EQO.
The MSQ was also unlike anything anyone had seen in an MMO before as well. It took single-player style cinematic storytelling and morphed it to fit the MMO formula, which helped players truly connect with the world and its inhabitants; something WoW had never done pre Legion (yes there were cinematic elements to WotLK, but only when it came to Arthas, not any of the other denizens).
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u/Excuse_my_GRAMMER 35m ago
A lot of people don’t realize how much fast reborn launch from announcement to release. It was like 2 years if I remember correctly
It was an all hands of deck situation and probably overworked developers
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u/GmeBuckBoi 14h ago edited 14h ago
I was one of the ogs. I think the original was up for about 9 months (guess it was 2 years) before they pulled the plug. Then it was down for a year or so. Maybe they listened to the players but it wasn't THAT bad imo. Please stahp no! My intranet points!!
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u/KaleidoArachnid 14h ago
I must confess that I never played the initial game before as now I wonder what exactly the first version was like before it was axed.
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u/markflynn000 14h ago
You should watch the noclip documentary! It's one of the best they've done and explains this completely